7 Reasons Most Supplements Never Reach Your Bloodstream

The supplement industry is built on the simple idea that if you just take the right compound, in the right dose, your body will do the rest. But that’s not quite how it works.

Sometimes, the ingredient never actually reaches the place in the body it is meant to act on. Between swallowing a capsule and its compounds arriving at a cell, there are quite a number of obstacles — from stomach acid, to digestive enzymes, intestinal wall barriers, and a liver that processes everything absorbed from the gut before it reaches circulation. For many compounds, this gauntlet creates serious roadblocks to supplements.

Dr. Christopher Shade, PhD, founder and CEO of Quicksilver Scientific, has spent his career working on this exact problem. Trained as an environmental chemist, he came to supplement science through personal necessity — he wanted to find a more effective delivery system for glutathione to address his own mercury toxicity. So, he founded Quicksilver Scientific in 2005, centering the brand around the core principle that delivery is not a secondary consideration. It is an essential element. As he puts it: “How you deliver a compound into the body ultimately determines how well it works.”

Here are seven reasons why the supplement in your cabinet may be doing less than you think it is — and how to make sure you’re picking the right delivery system for yours.

1. Stomach acid degrades many active ingredients before they can be absorbed

The digestive system is very effective at breaking things down. That is, after all, its primary job. But for sensitive compounds like glutathione, certain B vitamins, and many botanical actives, the digestive chemistry that dismantles food does the same for supplements. Specifically, stomach and digestive acids unravel proteins and peptide-based compounds and break molecular bonds so that by the time a standard capsule has made it through the stomach, a good proportion of its contents may already be inactive.

Glutathione, the body’s most abundant intracellular antioxidant and a big player in detoxification processes and cellular resilience, is one of the supplements that is affected by this process since it is structurally quite fragile. Oral, capsule-based glutathione supplements yield only 1 to 5% bioavailability because the peptide bonds that hold the molecule together are broken down by the digestive process before it can be absorbed. 

To address this issue, Quicksilver Scientific encapsulates their supplements, including Liposomal Glutathione, in lipid nanoparticle delivery systems (i.e. liposomes), to protect ingredients from the harsh environment of the stomach and improve absorption, which begins in the mouth. 

2. The intestinal wall is a more complex barrier than most people realise

Compounds that survive the stomach then face a second obstacle: the lining of the small intestine, which is selectively permeable by design. It allows certain molecules through while actively excluding others. The size of molecules, lipid solubility, and positive or negative charge all influence whether a compound can cross this barrier. Many supplements, including water-soluble vitamins at high doses and large-molecule botanicals, are simply too large or too polar to pass through efficiently.

Properly manufactured lipid nanoparticle delivery systems are able to rapidly absorb paracellularly (between cell layers). A quality liposome should be composed using phospholipids,  the same material that makes up cell membranes and their particle size should be small, ideally under 100 nanometers, to support the rapid cellular absorption that starts in the mucosal lining of the mouth and continues in the upper GI and intestinal lining. “If shortcuts are taken in manufacturing the liposome, like using poor quality ingredients and not paying attention to particle size or stability, bioavailability and absorption will be low, and it will have to break down in the GI tract like a standard pill or capsule, reducing its effectiveness. If the liposome is small and stable, like ours, bioavailability and absorption is high, it rapidly absorbs and is distributed throughout the body, where it can truly get to work,” says Dr. Shade.

3. Liver metabolism can cut down on a significant portion of what you absorb

Compounds absorbed through the normal digestive process must first travel through the liver before entering the bloodstream. At this point, the liver starts to metabolise and partially inactivate or change the compounds, including resveratrol, curcumin, and certain hormones, all before they ever reach the tissues or biological pathways where they are intended to act. 

The key to circumventing this liver metabolism process is to deliver compounds through liposomal delivery, circumventing the normal digestive process and avoiding first-pass metabolism through the liver. Studies on liposomal vitamin C, for instance, have found it to be nearly 200% more bioavailable than conventional oral forms, in part because of this bypass effect.

4. Not all liposomal products are created equal — particle size is everything

Recently, “liposomal” has become a marketing term that is quite broad. A product labeled “liposomal” may use particles that are several hundred nanometres in size, poorly manufactured, meaning they don’t have the true phospholipid composition required for cellular uptake. These products may offer modestly better absorption than a standard capsule but they are not doing the same thing as a quality manufactured nanoparticle formulation.

Dr. Shade is direct on this point: “When you make them correctly, that means the right size. They have to be around 100 nanometres or below, and also constructed with the right membrane compositions — like carefully selected phospholipids and surfactants.” Quicksilver Scientific’s liposomes are manufactured to between 20 and 100 nanometres, a range that supports both rapid mucosal absorption and stable navigation between cells.” 

5. Water-soluble and fat-soluble compounds require different delivery architectures

A common assumption is that liposomal delivery is a single, universal solution. In practice, the optimal delivery format depends quite a lot on the chemical properties of the active ingredient itself. Water-soluble compounds, such as vitamin C and glutathione, are best delivered via a liposome, where they can be encapsulated in a liquid core surrounded by a phospholipid bilayer. Fat-soluble compounds — vitamin D, vitamin A, and resveratrol — are better suited to nanoemulsions, which is where the ingredient is dissolved within tiny oil droplets that are then stabilised by a phospholipid monolayer.

Forcing a fat-soluble compound into a liposomal format, or a water-soluble compound into a nanoemulsion, actually works against the bioavailability and delivery mechanism. Quicksilver Scientific engineers the delivery system around the chemistry of each ingredient, rather than fitting ingredients into a one-size-fits-all format.

6. Timing of absorption matters as much as the dose — and conventional formats ignore it

Most discussion of supplement bioavailability focuses on absorption rates — what percentage of the active ingredient enters circulation. But the timing of that absorption, and why it matters for compounds that are intended to work together, is also incredibly important.

In a standard multi-ingredient capsule or tablet, different compounds dissolve and absorb at different rates. One ingredient may reach peak concentration in the blood in an hour, while another may take four hours, and a third ingredient, eight. For biological processes that depend on multiple molecules and nutrients acting in concert, these different timings can make the supplement less effective on the whole. 

“Our delivery systems are designed to not only improve absorption, but also to synchronise delivery so ingredients can become available to the body in a more coordinated manner,” says Dr. Shade.

He calls this principle Biosynchronous Activation™: the philosophy that biological systems often function best when multiple compounds arrive and act in unison. Quicksilver Scientific’s NAD+ Platinum, which combines NMN, Riboflavin-5-Phosphate, Methylcobalamin and resveratrol in a single liposomal formula, is designed precisely around this principle, synchronising the arrival of each component to support NAD+ production, recycling, and utilisation at the cellular level.

7. High-quality ingredients and high bioavailability are not the same thing

The final yet perhaps biggest misconception is the assumption that ingredient quality and effective delivery are the same thing. Consumers have become increasingly sophisticated about sourcing — seeking organic produce, grass-fed animal products, and minimally processed foods. When that same logic is applied to supplements, it leads to a reasonable but incomplete conclusion: that a product containing a high-quality active ingredient will automatically deliver meaningful results.

Quality of input matters. But it is not sufficient. A pharmaceutical-grade ingredient in a capsule that delivers 3% of its active content to the bloodstream is, in practical terms, a weaker product than a moderately sourced ingredient in a format that delivers 60%. The gap between label claim and biological reality is largely a delivery gap, not an ingredient gap. This is the founding premise of Quicksilver Scientific’s entire product philosophy. As Dr. Shade puts it: “In areas like detoxification, cellular energy production, and metabolic health, timing can be just as important as the ingredients themselves.”

The Quicksilver Scientific range is available on Healf, including Liposomal Glutathione and NAD+ Platinum.

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